weird logic

[Bill Stewart]

At 06:15 PM 06/17/2003 -0500, Harmon Seaver wrote:
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2998870.stm
>"With Iraq's judicial system in disarray after the end of the war, Paul Bremer
>said a special criminal court would be set up.
>He said the court would try people, "in particular senior Baathists... may 
>have
>committed crimes against the coalition, who are trying to destabilise the
>situation"."
>
>    So you invade a country, and the patriots who resist you are no longer
>soldiers, even guerillas, but "criminals" to be tried in the US's weird new
>courts, probably secretly with no representation.

Yup.  And USA Today was referring to the US military reserve soldiers
who were sent there as "Citizen Soldiers", but of course
*Iraqis* who fought the invaders weren't "citizen soldiers",
they were "terrorists" or "illegal combatants" or "evil" or
"failing to act sufficiently French by surrendering".

And since the US Constitution doesn't apply to
US forces operating outside the US, there's no prohibition
against "ex post facto" laws about "crimes against the coalition",
and of course the Bush Administration bullied Brussels into exempting
their armed forces from war crimes laws.